John Barth: The Development

But then, it's only we who remember, for better or worse and as best some of us can, when the neighborhood was in it's prime: "built out," as they say, after it's raw early years of construction and new planting, it's trees and shrubbery and flower beds mature, the villas comfortably settled into their sites but not yet showing signs of "deferred maintenance" despite the Association's best efforts to keep things shipshape. Same goes for HBE generally, it's several neighborhoods at first scalped building lots with model homes at comparatively bargain prices, then handsomely full-bloomed and more expensive, then declining a bit here and there (while still final-building on a few acres of former "preserve") as Tidewater Communities, Inc., moved on to newer projects all around the estuary. And likewise, to be sure, for the great Bay itself: inarguably downhill since residential development and agribusiness boomed in the past half-century, with their runoff of nutrients and pollutants and the consequent ecological damage. Ditto our Republic, some would say, and for that matter the world: downhill, at least on balance, despite there having been no world wars lately.

Nor are we-all what we used to be, either.

But this is not about that, exactly. M. and I have quite enjoyed our tenure here at 1010 Oyster Cove Court, our next-to-last home address. Of the half-dozen we've shared in our nearly fifty years of marriage, none has been more agreeable than our "villa" of the past fifteen and sole residence of the past ten, since we gave up straddling the Bay. We've liked our serial neighbors, too: next door in 1008, for example, at the time I'll tell of, Jim and Reba Smythe, right-wingers both, but generous, hospitable, and civic-spirited; he a semiretired, still smoothly handsome investment broker, ardent wildfowl hunter, and all-round gun lover; she an elegant pillar of the Episcopal church and the county hospital board. On our other side back then, in 1012, lively Matt and Mary ("M&M") Grauer, he a portly and ruddy-faced ex — Methodist minister turned all-purpose private-practice "counselor"; she a chubbily cheerful flower-gardener and baker of irresistible cheesecakes; both of them avid golfers, tireless volunteers, and supporters of worthy, mildly liberal causes. And across the Court in 1011, then as now, our resident philosopher Sam Bailey, recently widowered, alas: a lean and bald and bearded, acerbic but dourly amusing retired professor of something or other at an Eastern Shore branch of the state university, as left of center as the Smythes were right, whose business card reads Dr. Samuel Bailey, Ph.D., Educational Consultant —whatever that is. Different as we twenty-odd Oyster Cove householders were and are — and never particularly close friends, mind, just amiable neighbors — we've always quite gotten along, pitched in together on community projects (most of us, anyhow: What community doesn't include a couple of standoffish free riders?), and taken active part in OCNA, our neighborhood association. Indeed, for the past twelve years I've served as that outfit's president; it's a post I'll vacate with some regret when the For Sale sign goes up out front. And despite my having been, please remember, a mere history teacher, not a historian, I find myself inclined to set down for whomever, before my memory goes kaput altogether, some account of our little community, in particular of what Margie and I consider to have been it's most interesting hour: the summer of the Peeping Tom.

And when was that? Suffice it to say, not many years since. Odd as this may sound from an ex — history teach, the exact dates aren't important. Truth is, I'd rather not be specific, lest some busybody go through the records and think: "Mm- hm: Just after the [So-and-Sos] bought [Twelve-Sixteen, say], which they sold a year later and skipped out to Florida. I thought there was something fishy about that pair, him especially. Didn't even play golf!" When in fact the poor guy had advanced emphysema and shifted south to escape our chilly-damp tidewater winters. So let's just say that the time I'll tell of, if I manage to, was well after "Vietnam," but before "Iraq"; more specifically, after desktop and even laptop computers had become commonplace, but before handheld ones came on line; after cordless phones, but before everybody had cellulars; after VCRs, but before DVDs.

Okay? The name's Tim Manning, by the way — and if You've got the kind of eye and ear for such things that Matt Grauer used to have, You'll have noted that in all four of the families thus far introduced, the men are called by one-syllable first names and their wives by two-, with the accent on the first (Sam Bailey's late mate, a rail-thin black-haired beauty until cancer chemotherapy wrecked her, was named Ethel). So? So nothing, I suppose, except maybe bear in mind Dr. Sam's wise caution that a Pattern — of last names, happenings, whatever — doth not in itself a Meaning make, much as we may be programmed by evolution to see patterns in things, and significance in patterns.

Okay?

Okay. "It all began," as stories so often start (and if I were a storyteller instead of a history-teller, I'd have started this tale right here, like that, instead of where and how I did), late one mid-May evening in 19-whatever: already warm enough here in Chesapeake country to leave windows open until bedtime, but no AC or even ceiling fans needed yet. After cleaning up the dinner dishes, Margie and I had enjoyed a postprandial stroll around Oyster Cove Court, as was and remains our habit, followed by an hour's reading in 1010's living room; then we'd changed into nightclothes and settled down in the villa's family room as usual to spend our waking day's last hour with the telly before our half-past-ten bedtime. At a commercial break in whatever program we were watching, I stepped into the kitchen to pour my regular pale-ale nightcap while Margie went into the adjacent lavatory to pee — and a few moments later I heard her shriek my name. I set down bottle and glass and hurried herward; all but collided with her as she fled the pissoir, tugging up the underpants that she wears under her shortie nightgown on warm end-of-evenings.

"Somebody's out there!" In all our years of marriage I'd seldom seen my self-possessed helpmeet so alarmed. " Looking at me!"

I flicked off the light and hurried past her to the open lavatory window, near the toilet. Nothing in sight through it's screen except the Leyland cypresses, dimly visible in the streetlight-glow from O.C. Court, between us and the Smythes, which give both houses privacy enough to make closing our first-floor window blinds unnecessary. "Call Security," I said (Heron Bay's main gatehouse); "I'll go have a look outside." Hurried back into the kitchen, grabbed the big flashlight from atop the fridge, and headed for the back door.